From grin to grimace

Brandon T Snider
DC Comics: the Ultimate Character Guide
Dorling Kindersley 2012 (2011)

They say the world of comics nerdism is divided between fans of Marvel Comics and aficionados of DC Comics. (OK, I may have made that up, but I’m pretty sure it’s what ‘they’ say.) Me, I was as a kid brought up mostly on a diet of Batman, Superman and the Justice League and tended to stick to what I knew, not that I had anything against Spiderman, Hulk or the Fantastic Four. But I also read Classics Illustrated, and the cartoons in the papers, so I guess I was not too particular. My first experience of superheroes was cycling to comic stalls in Hong Kong, where the stallholder mostly turned a blind eye on my freebie reading so long as I bought a copy now and again.

But then time moves on. Come the 70s a rather camp Batman (exaggerated by the popular TV series) had morphed into a sombre Dark Knight; his toothpaste smile having gone from grin to grimace was a change I very much approved; similar things were happening to other stalwarts in the DC universe — convoluted backstories, new origins, even grown-up boy wonders. And now as a long-time absentee from comics I just don’t know where anything stands. Maybe this Dorling Kindersley publication would elucidate?

Crusader with a cape

Batman: The Chalice
by Chuck Dixon.
Illustrated by John Van Fleet.
DC Comics, 1999.

Into Bruce Wayne’s hands is entrusted an object for safekeeping. Once sought and guarded by his medieval ancestors, the house of Gevain, the Holy Grail — for this is it, a relic missing since the time of the Crusades — proves a dangerous legacy for Wayne to guard, even when he is in his guise of Gotham City’s finest, Batman.

Shall I list those who also seek the cup for its power? Ra’s al Ghul, the Penguin, Catwoman, Ubu, the Brotherhood of the Merivingians [sic] for a start. Lined up on the caped crusader’s side are Alfred, Azrael, the Oracle and Commissioner Gordon, but will they be enough to hold off the dark forces that hanker after the sacred receptacle?

Or will Bruce be forced to call upon a more superior being to spirit it away?

The witching hour

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Watchmen
Titan Books 2007 (1986-7)

As a classical musician I’ve learned there’s a delicate balancing act between heart and mind, between emotional response and cool analysis. I’ve also learned that this balancing act is a transferable skill when it comes to other areas of human endeavour, whether art, architecture, drama or narrative. At a recent live performance of Wintereisse I was mentally transported to the bleak landscape of Schubert’s song cycle, the stark monochrome images of the poems perfectly echoed by the composer’s sparse writing and a sympathetic musical interpretation, whilst simultaneously admiring Schubert’s sustained technical mastery. I sensed the same kind of balance when reading the now classic graphic novel Watchmen, a symbiosis of writing and imagery that in some respects parallels Wintereisse.

After being rejected in love Schubert’s protagonist undertakes a solitary winter’s journey, where everything seems emblematic of his state: he’s pushed around by fate like the weathervane by the wind, showered with snow knocked off roofs by crows, joined by a raven which reminds him of death, and identifies himself with a despised itinerant hurdy-gurdy man.

Watchmen has the same atmosphere of doom and gloom by being mostly set in autumn 1985, in the days leading up to All Souls Day on November 2nd, even concluding via the snowy wastes of Antarctica with the midwinter festival of Christmas. The twenty-four songs of Wintereisse are matched by Watchmen’s twelve chapters with eleven interludes and a kind of postlude. And the same themes of rejection and loneliness are present everywhere in the graphic novel.